The southern Philippine island of Mindanao got a huge chunks of development projects from the United States government as the US pledged more than P3.5 Billion worth of assistance in the next few years.

One of the major development projects under the Duterte administration pledged by the US government is the efforts to build the Roll-on, Roll-off or RO-RO Nautical Highway, which will connect the cities of Davao and General Santos to Bitung in Sulawesi Island of Indonesia.

The US Embassy announced the billion peso government pledge for the development projects in Mindanao. The statement said the bilateral partnership has expanded from cooperation on counterterrorism, child protection and piracy, to a broader domain of economic development in Mindanao.

At the luncheon meeting of the American Chamber of Commerce-Mindanao, US Ambassador Sung Y. Kim also conveyed the US government’s support for “the vibrant US-Philippine economic relations.”

The US ambassador to the Philippines also cited a few concrete examples of Philippines-US economic cooperation, including the business process outsourcing industry in which US-based clients generate an estimated 40,000 BPO jobs in Mindanao.

Aside from the BPO sector, the agricultural sector also benefited from a deeper Philippines-US economic cooperation. A US agricultural corporation, exports P7.5 billion worth of coconut oil every year, much of which comes from Mindanao, supporting tens of thousands of Mindanao farmers.